Seabee Museum gets finishing touches before grand opening

Jerry Marty of the National Science Foundation bolts a gussett plate to the strut of the top ring of the geodesic dome that sheltered the South Pole Antarctica station for over 30 years. The top ring will be displayed at the Seabee Museum.

A bubble at the bottom of the sea and a dome at the bottom of the Earth are starring in the grand opening Friday of the new Seabee Museum at Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme.

The Naval Experimental Manned Observatory, or NEMO, is a 2-ton motorized acrylic bubble that allowed nondiving scientists to travel far below the ocean's surface in the 1970s.

"It was the first time you could take a see-through plastic submersible underwater," said Phil Rockwell, program manager of ocean engineering support for the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center at the base.

The second big attraction is the top of a geodesic dome that sheltered the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station for more than 25 years. Three men who helped design and construct the dome in the early 1970s traveled to Port Hueneme last week to supervise Seabees as they suspended the top rings of the dome over the Antarctica section of the museum.

Seabee Days: The museum will also be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during 2011 Naval Base Ventura County Seabee Days on Saturday and Sunday. A free shuttle will take visitors from Seabee Days events to the museum. The shuttle station is at the corner of 23rd Avenue and Harris Street and will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Parking and admission are free.More information: http://www.usnavyseabeemuseum.com

"John, Lee and myself are very excited to be a part of it," said Jerry Marty, 63, of Long Beach, who served as the construction liaison for the National Science Foundation during the dome's construction. "Not to mention that it is 'full circle' for us."

The dome was going to be torn down, but Marty fought to preserve it along with Lee Mattis, 66, of Danville and retired Navy Cmdr. John Perry, 73, of Fairfax, Va.

Mattis was with the engineering firm that designed the dome, and Perry was in charge of the Seabees constructing the dome.

The 35,000-square-foot museum is designed to be a walk-through history that begins with the start of the Seabees in 1942 and brings visitors up to present-day Seabee projects, such as building roads, bridges and camps for areas devastated by natural disasters.

The museum will open at noon Friday. Visitors should enter the base at Sunkist Gate, at the intersection of Ventura Road and Sunkist Street.

Finding NEMO

Rockwell remembers the first time he sat inside NEMO as it was lowered over the side of a Navy ship into the cold waters 25 miles offshore between Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The sea swallowed the observation bubble and Rockwell and his co-pilot began their descent. Fans hummed to expel the carbon dioxide they were exhaling. They turned on their lights at 250 feet, when the sea grew black.

"You could hear crustaceans clicking. It gets transmitted through the hull," Rockwell said.

They continued their descent to the ocean's floor, more than 600 feet down. NEMO was built to withstand a depth of 3,000 feet.

NEMO was a pioneer when Rockwell helped develop it in the late 1960s and '70s, when moon exploration was at its peak.

"It's the Navy's version of the space race," said Seabee Museum director Lara Godbille.

NEMO was unique because of its spherical design to resist underwater pressure and its clear, acrylic hull.

"There are now acrylic viewports and screens submarines use, but back then, it was real experimental," said Wayne Tausig, department head of ocean facilities of the Navy Facilities Engineering Command.

During the Cold War, the Seabees were involved in laying cable along the ocean floor that would help them detect communications in submarines. NEMO also allowed scientists to conduct deepwater exploration that Rockwell found more promising than outer space.

"The ocean's bottom is way more interesting than the moon's behind," Rockwell said.

Newer technology retired NEMO, which was banished into storage until it turned up outside Disneyland's submarine ride.

Rockwell and other volunteers from the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center donated their time to refurbish NEMO and create an undersea mural as a backdrop, complete with undulating lights to simulate a deepwater drive.

They build, they fight

The Seabees were developed as a construction force after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

"They had civilians building infrastructure but saw it was too dangerous to have them near the front lines, so the Navy trained them and the Seabees were born," Godbille said.

The Seabee story begins in the museum with a World War II section, where digitized 16-millimeter footage of Seabees will run continuously next to a display of Seabee World War II memorabilia.

The Vietnam War portion of the museum has an actual-sized "hootch," which is a wooden house with a corrugated steel slanted roof that Seabees would build in the humid jungles of Vietnam.

All of the items on display were distilled from a collection that sits in a silent, cavernous storage room in the museum. A heavy door protects the silent, humidity- and temperature-controlled room, where row after row of floor-to-ceiling shelves are stacked with boxes.

"This is 60-plus years of history," Godbille said.

Godbille's staff spent two years categorizing and researching every letter, every ship's log, every carving and every uniform from the original museum, which opened on base in 1947, and the additional collection.

"There were 325,000 Seabees in World War II, and 85 percent of them went through Port Hueneme from the Pacific," Godbille said. "We have a great stockpile of stuff."

In the boxes are uniforms, letters, handicrafts created from shells and ammunition casings, stuffed penguins and a bear rug that was the result of a Seabee shooting a bear in Kodiak, Alaska.

A dream realized

Guests who walk through the Antarctica exhibit can see a subzero polar suit, the control panel used at the South Pole station and part of the 164-foot-diameter geodesic dome considered a marvel at its time because it helped resist the weight of accumulated snow.

Marty, Perry and Mattis all spent time under the dome, creating human bonds strengthened by the inhuman conditions outside the 52-foot-tall structure. In the buildings under the dome, scientists conducted research on everything from global warming to the origins of life.

All three men remember walking between buildings and looking up to see the top of the dome, which visitors will now see.

"It's above you in the museum, so when you look up, the top ring has three vent openings," said "If it was a clear day, it was pure blue. You couldn't help but stop and look up. It was so beautiful."

The dome was declared outdated in the early 1990s and slated for demolition. But Lee, Marty and Mattis returned to Antarctica in 2005 to determine how each piece could be dismantled, labeled and shipped to Port Hueneme.

In 2009, they supervised the dismantling over speaker phone and in late 2010, were there to see the pieces arrive in Port Hueneme.

Seeing part of the dome go on display is a triumph for the three men

"It's going to be a small percentage of the total dome, but ... it's really a good preservation of Seabee history," Marty said.